The More Eliminator

Productivity directly related to Precise Focus

The More Eliminator

Hello & Welcome!

The key identifier of highly productive people is an absolute focus on activities that produce results, and then doing as many of those things (and only those things) as possible at any given time.

Entrepreneurs and sales people only get paid when their efforts produce revenue, not how busy they are, how many meetings they attend, how many emails they read, etc. 

Every activity has to contribute to a client paying for the product or service, or support closing a deal in a direct way. For them, the day doesn’t begin or end at a specific time, it ends when they have all their goals achieved for the day. There’s always one more call to make, or something else to be done. 

That is why they get so frustrated when other people waste their time - in their head they could be making money instead of whatever is in front of them. Everything is weighed as an opportunity cost. Time literally is money.

To get a sense of this, imagine if your current job only paid you if the activity you’re working on produced a tangible, measurable result: Not partial work, lines of code or pages written, emails sent, or “progress”, but actual finished product that is purchased by a customer - without a limit on how much money you could make. The flip side is that if you don’t hit a minimum threshold you’re fired. (If you are an entrepreneur, it means closing your business.) Nothing focuses your attention like having that type of pressure hanging over your head day in and day out.

We all get the same 1,440 minutes in a day. Once that minute is up, it is gone forever. There are some things you can multitask, but in general if you spend time doing one thing, you can’t work on something else. This is known as an opportunity cost. To be highly productive, you have to focus on the tasks that offer largest return on your time.

The question that highly productive people need to constantly ask themselves is:

“Is this the best use of my time right now?”

The most valuable opportunities are typically the ones you choose to do proactively, rather than reactive firefighting. In sales and entrepreneurship you have to be out ahead of the opportunities, anticipating your customers’ needs, generating demand by educating your customer, and most importantly you have to always be ahead of your competitors.

This splits the workday into tasks that can only be completed during normal business hours (like meeting with people face to face), and tasks that can be completed during off hours (administrative tasks, prep work, research, reports, contracts, etc.,) 

From 9am to 6pm, the goal should be to be face to face with as many customers, partners, suppliers, investors, industry insiders, and employees as possible, focusing on tasks that generate revenue or support activities that will generate future revenue.

Of course, all sorts of unplanned requests and tasks turn up all day. 

These are usually distractions and productivity killers, and productive people learn to quickly triage these. In general, the evaluation process looks like this:

·         Does this need to be done at all ?: You will never run out of things to do (especially as an entrepreneur), so what you say no to is just as important as what you choose to work on.

·         Am I the only person who can do this task?: Entrepreneurs often have a hard time delegating and want to do everything themselves, which just makes things worse for them. If you can effectively delegate a task, automated it, or outsource it, then move it off your plate.

·         How important or urgent is the task?: This determines priorities. Some “urgent” items are not that important, and some important items are not urgent. Ask yourself: Do you need to do it now, or can you work on it later? How long does the task take? Does it take 1 minute to complete? Does it have to be done during your valuable business hours (meaning it involves collaborating with other people in your time zone)?

This process will seriously cut the time wasters out of your day, and push the less important but still necessary items to “off hours”. Plan ahead and achieve highly successful results for your business.